Tag Archives: Merle Haggard

Sony/ATV chief Donna Hilley talks with Alabama member Randy Owen before signing members of the group as Tree songwriters in 1999. (File / The Tennessean)

By Bobby Allyn
The Tennessean

Donna Hilley, the affable former radio secretary turned Sony music executive who helped engineer Sony’s takeover of Tree International Publishing, died Wednesday at her home in Brentwood. She was 71.

Hilley, a Birmingham, Ala., native, began her career in the late ’50s as a typist for Nashville’s WKDA radio, then a 250-watt rock station.

In the early ’70s, after a stint in public relations, Hilley was hired by Tree, the music publisher. Twenty years later, she was leading the company, whose song copyrights nearly quadrupled under her guidance.

Donna Hilley, the music executive who helped Sony/ATV to become Nashville’s largest publishing company, died Wednesday at age 71, after years of failing health.

Ms. Hilley, born in Birmingham, Ala., worked at Nashville radio station WKDA and at a public relations firm before joining music publisher Tree in 1973. She became Tree’s vice president and chief operating officer in 1978 and arranged Tree’s sale to CBA (which later became Sony Music Publishing) in 1989. She was named chief executive officer and vice president of Tree in 1994.

Before her retirement in December 2005, Ms. Hilley worked to expand her publishing company, and to acquire major songwriting catalogs including Merle Haggard’s and Jim Reeves’.

“Donna Hilley’s legacy at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, on Music Row’s artists and songwriters and on the broader Nashville community could never fully be expressed with words,” Sony/ATV Nashville President Troy Tomlinson said in a statement. “She was an icon in every sense — an inspiring trailblazer for women executives in the music business, a staunch advocate for artists and songwriters and a genuine competitor who was respected, but never underestimated, by her peers.”

In 1992, Entertainment Weekly magazine ranked Hilley among its “Ten Most Powerful People In Country Music.” She served on the boards of the Country Music Association, ASCAP and the Music Publishers Association of the United States.

“She was one of a kind,” hit songwriter Gretchen Peters wrote on her social media sites Wednesday evening. “I am so grateful for my time at Tree with her. She always gave me the room to do what I do and she was always in my corner.”

“It almost killed me, trying to keep this alive,” says Mark Collie. “I woke up thinking about this every day for the past 10 years. People start thinking you’re insane.”

In October of 2001, Collie brought a crew of musicians, producers and filmmakers to Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, the maximum-security prison in Morgan County. Collie had been visiting the prison for some months, meeting the inmates, hearing their stories and penning some songs about their plights.

Some of the prisoners knew of his place in the country music world, where he’d charted a couple of Top 10 singles and penned songs for Tim McGraw, Willie Nelson, Marty Stuart, Martina McBride and others. Some of the prisoners asked him to sing for them.

Some of the prisoners told him to go away. But he didn’t go away, at least not until he had performed and recorded a show inside the prison gates, a show that found Collie singing songs of sin and redemption and of the places in between. The album was going to come out on MCA Records, accompanied by a feature-length documentary.

Merle Haggard turned 75 last week. He’s had health problems. He’s a Country Music Hall of Famer, a Kennedy Center Honoree and almost certainly the greatest living artist-songwriter in country music. Kris Kristofferson calls him the greatest artist in American history, and no one much argues with Kris Kristofferson.

Haggard could have showed up at the Ryman Auditorium for his Wednesday night gig, done 55 minutes of perfunctory greatest hits, waved and said goodnight to a thunderous ovation. He could have even duffed the gig entirely. He could have goofed his way through, gone through the motions, whatever.

Nothing to prove. Nothing at stake.

But Haggard played a full set, fully engaged, absolutely entertaining and completely in-the-moment. He relied largely on the hits, with most every song winning an ovation before he even began singing, but the enormity of Haggard’s catalogue meant that favorites including “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” “Hungry Eyes,” “My Favorite Memory,” “That’s The Way Love Goes,” “Going Where The Lonely Go,” “It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad)” and “Always Wanting You” weren’t included.

Click here for a photo gallery from the 2012 We're All for the Hall concert. Here, hosts Vince Gill and Keith Urban perform during the benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum at the Bridgestone Arena Tuesday, April 10, 2012 in Nashville, Tenn. (GEORGE WALKER IV / THE TENNESSEAN)

“The third time is the charm,” Urban told the sold-out crowd. “I can’t wait for you guys to see who is coming out tonight.”

But the evening’s chief surprise was for Urban: Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill took the stage to invite the “You Gonna Fly” singer to be the next member of the Grand Ole Opry. When Urban is inducted on April 21, he’ll become the first member not born in North America.

"I don't know what to say. Gosh, man, thank you so much to everyone at the Grand Ole Opry tonight. I'm shocked. It's a huge honor and how beautiful to have this happen tonight of all nights. I so appreciate this," Urban said, surrounding by other Opry members Gill had called back on the stage. Members of The Oak Ridge Boys, Diamond Rio and Rascal Flatts, the Opry's newest inductees, had previously performed and returned to be part of the surprise.

Click to see a gallery of Merle Haggard over the years (photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images for The Smith Center)

He’s a singer, a songwriter and a survivor.

He’s had 77 albums and 41 chart-topping songs.

But it’s another number that brings him pride these days.

Merle Haggard, the much-vaunted “poet of the common man” and the fellow many folks figure to be the finest singer-songwriter in the history of country music, paused to think about his most recent triumph.

Click to see a gallery of Merle Haggard over the years (photo: Jae S. Lee/The Tennessean)

Happy birthday to country music legend Merle Haggard, who turns 75 today. Some lucky Nashvillians will have the chance to wish him a happy birthday in person pretty soon - he'll take the stage at the Ryman Auditorium for a sold-out show on April 11.

The Bakersfield Sound is a priceless piece of musical history to exhibit narrator Dwight Yoakam, who counted Bakersfield legend Buck Owens as a friend and collaborator.

The country star and actor took a break from recording a new album in Los Angeles to talk with The Tennessean about getting involved with the new Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit, the experience of swapping songs and stories with Merle Haggard and Chris Hillman for the project, and how the Bakersfield sound has inspired him.

On the influence the Bakersfield Sound had on his own music:

“Without them, I would not have had the career that I’ve had. I don’t know if I wouldn’t have had any career, but I certainly would have taken a different path ... I owe a great debt for their musical influence and inspiration, being what drew me to the west coast, that gave me the life and the career that I’ve had, all the way up through to what I did on this current album.

“I actually did a cover version of ‘Dim Lights, Thick Smoke,’ which was an outgrowth of Joe and Rose Maphis [authors of Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)] driving to Bakersfield to see this new band this guy had at the Blackboard, I think in 1958. It’s in some of the written materials that accompany the exhibit. I thought it was hilarious that Joe said he went in and watched this young band, this guy Buck Owens. At the time, Buck was not a solo artist on Capitol yet … [Joe] said he watched for an hour or so, and couldn’t take much more, because it was the loudest band he had ever heard in his life. I had to laugh, because when Buck came on stage with us, there was an explosion of sound.”

Click the picture to see more photos from the new Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and California Country. (photo: Samuel M. Simpkins / The Tennessean)

It’s a town where country music legends were made and countless classic songs were penned, where a tight-knit community of pickers honed their chops in smoky bars and honky-tonks.

Sound like Nashville? Not even close.

Two thousand miles from Music City in Bakersfield, Calif., a town full of talent — whose residents included Buck Owens and Merle Haggard — crafted an amplified, lean-and-mean brand of country music throughout the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. That sound and its continuing influence are celebrated in a brand-new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame, The Bakersfield Sound: Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and California Country, which opened Friday.

Fans of Haggard and Owens will find plenty of fascinating artifacts to pore over, but Bakersfield — narrated via video by Dwight Yoakam — also celebrates the scene’s under-sung heroes and trailblazers, including musician and disc jockey Bill Woods, who’s considered “The Father of the Bakersfield Sound.”

“It lets us tell (Owens and Haggard’s) story and the indelible mark that they made on popular music, but show the larger context from which they emerged,” says exhibit co-curator Michael Gray. “They didn’t emerge out of a vacuum. There was this larger, interesting scene happening all around them that set the stage.”